The disclosure of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/045,943, filed Sep. 4, 2014, is hereby incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
It is well known to stack decanters, dispensers, and other vessels (hereinafter sometimes referred to collectively herein as decanters) for holding beverages such as tea, coffee, hot chocolate, juice, and the like. It is also well known to provide apparatus to allow stacking the decanters in vertically aligned relation. Additionally, apparatus are known to allow vertically stacking the decanters with faucets or other dispensing valves in sidewardly offset relation, that is, with one or more of the faucets or valves offset sidewardly from another one or more of the faucets. Reference in this regard, Jacobson et al. U.S. Pat. No. 7,128,230 B2, directed to a Beverage Decanter Adapter and Lid that allows stacking decanters in vertically aligned or coaxial relation. However, a shortcoming that has been observed is that the faucet or faucets of the upper decanter or decanters can drip onto the faucet or faucets of the lower decanter or decanters soiling them. This is a significant problem when the upper decanter contains a sugary drink such as sweet tea presently popular in the U.S., as the residue becomes sticky on the lower faucet, so as to be unsanitary to use and attracts dirt. It is possible to rotate the stacked decanters when using the adapter of U.S. Pat. No. 7,128,230 B2, about their common axis, but only if the decanters are cylindrical. Presently, a large number of decanters in commercial use are of a generally rectangular shape (when viewed from above or below, and the adapter of U.S. Pat. No. 7,128,230 B2 provides no manner of relatively rotating stacked decanters of that shape.
Shelving racks allowing vertically arranging beverage decanters are also known. However, they are expensive, and mainly still align the faucets of the upper and lower decanters so as to have the above referenced shortcoming.
Thus, what is sought is apparatus for stacking beverage decanters, particularly, but not limited to those having a rectangular shape, that allows easily and inexpensively offsetting the faucets to avoid one or more of the shortcomings set forth above.